In Matter of Coronado-Acevedo, 28 I&N Dec. 648 (A.G. 2022), Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that immigration judges did have the authority to terminate cases before them under certain circumstances. This clarified the issue that immigration judges have authority to terminate cases under such circumstances with or without the concurrence of the DHS. This is a very important decision, because it dovetails with the overruling of a particularly limiting case, Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018) [which prevented immigration judges from terminating immigration procee ..read more

©Attorney Farhad Sethna, 2022 The USCIS final rule on DACA goes into effect on October 31, 2022.  The USCIS states that there are over 700,000 DACA recipients in the United States. What does this rule mean for the DACA-eligible alien, brought to the United States as a child under 16, before 2007? Briefly, the new rule codifies the DACA memoranda issued by Homeland security during the Obama administration. The DACA program has been criticized as being illegal by various Republican governments, notably the state of Texas. Many Republican governors have denied DACA recipients driver’s licens ..read more

In Matter of Fernandes, 28 I&N Dec. 605 (BIA 2022), a three-member panel on the board of immigration appeals (BIA) held, in a two – one decision, that indeed, alien respondents could claim that a Notice to Appear was deficient, as long as such claim was made prior to the conclusion of pleadings being taken before the immigration judge. However, such a claim would not lead to termination of the removal case but would allow an immigration judge to give the Department of Homeland Security time to remedy the defective Notice to Appear by issuing a new NTA. This decision is flawed for a number ..read more

©Attorney Farhad Sethna, 2022 In a decision issued May 16, 2022, in Patel v Garland, the United States Supreme Court struck a massive blow against immigrants. In that decision, the Supreme Court held that no court had any authority to examine the factual basis for a decision by the USCIS or by the Department of Homeland Security, including immigration judges, and any review by the federal courts would be limited only to “questions of law or constitutional issues”. This is indeed a shocking development. For years, the federal courts have been the only check on the otherwise unbridled authority ..read more

Copyright 2022, by Farhad Sethna, Attorney, and Paul O’Brien, Law Clerk, the Law Offices of Farhad Sethna On April 12, 2021, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that the 2019 “Public Charge Final Rule”, which was enacted under the Trump administration, would no longer be in effect.  Given the anti-immigrant tenor of the Trump Administration, the Rule severely restricted immigration on the likelihood of an alien becoming a “public charge” (needing government assistance for food, housing, medical care, etc.)  The Trump-era regulation was enjoined (stopped) by a cour ..read more

The US immigration and customs enforcement has opened up a huge new detention center, the “Moshannon Valley Processing Center ”, in the middle of Pennsylvania. Never mind that it’s hundreds of miles away from the Cleveland immigration court. Never mind that it will take attorneys a day to get there and back, even from neighboring states. Detainees there will have their bond hearings, asylum hearings, and any other hearings for immigration relief via video with the Immigration Court in Cleveland. When the USICE was using the Youngstown federal prison as a detention center, the process was very ..read more

©Attorney Farhad Sethna, 2021 As background, prosecutorial discretion under the Department of Homeland Security is essentially a determination by DHS as to which aliens it is going to prosecute and which aliens it would refrain from prosecuting or stay immigration removal proceedings against such aliens. Pursuant to the Biden administration’s direction for review of immigration matters, the USICE, the primary immigration related enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security issued a memorandum on May 27, 2021. That memorandum is titled “Interim guidance to OPLA attorneys regarding civ ..read more

On April 29, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States, decided in Niz-Chavez v Garland, Case No. 19-863, 593 U.S. ___ (2021). Basically, in Niz-Chavez, the Supreme Court reiterated its original rule in Pereira v. Sessions, 585 U. S. ___ (2018) had held that a Notice to Appear must include the date and time of the immigration court hearing. If it did not, then the Notice to Appear was defective, and the recipient of that Notice to Appear would continue to accrue time toward the 10-year cancellation of removal for nonpermanent residents as set forth in the statute. The BIA, not wanting to be ..read more

©Attorney Farhad Sethna, 2021 This blog article provides information on the class settlement between various plaintiffs – asylum-seekers, and the US government. The case is Mendez-Rojas v. Johnson 305 F. Supp. 3d 1176 (W.D. Wash. 2018). Briefly, in Mendez-Rojas, the court agreed that the government’s failure to provide adequate notice of the one-year filing deadline for asylum applications was a violation of the law, namely, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), and the due process rights of asylum-seekers under the Fifth Amendment to the US Consti ..read more

Dear Reader:  PLEASE NOTE – each and every clause of the new bill is NOT discussed below – this summary is of the clauses that I thought were relevant and important to my practice and my client base.  Please refer to an attorney for more details.  Note that the Bill as it exists has NOT passed, and therefore it is NOT law.  Current law applies and controls till this Bill passes and is signed by the President, making it law.  Thereafter, the DHS has one year to issue regulations to implement the law. So, if the Bill passes, it will still be some time for any changes to ..read more